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Gigacrawler – character creation.

Please let me know what you think. Especially interested in suggestions for more backgrounds.

There are three steps to creating a character:

Roll for attributes.

Adjust attributes.

Determine background.

Roll for attributes

Roll the three dice, and total them. This is your Agility score. It’s best to write softly and use a pencil, because you might adjust one or two scores in the next step.

Roll again for your Charisma score. Then do the same for Intelligence, Willpower and Physique.

Note that there are two boxes for Physique: ‘Starting Physique’ and ‘Current Physique’. Write your Physique score in both boxes. Do the same for Willpower.

Note that you don’t roll for your Tech Level or Magic Level. These scores are generated when you roll for background.

Adjust attributes

Look at your highest score. If this score is 12 or less, raise it to 13. If you have two or more scores that are tied for highest and they’re 12 or less, randomly pick one and raise that to 13.

Now look at your lowest score. If this score is 9 or more, lower it to 8. Again, in case of a tie randomly choose one score.

Your character will therefore have at least one score of 13 or more, and at least one score of 8 or less.

Roll for background

At this stage you must roll a ‘d66’. This means that you nominate one die to indicate tens, and the other two indicate ones, then roll them. For example, if the ‘tens’ die shows 3 and the ‘ones’ die shows 4, the result will be 34.

Every background has attribute requirements. If your character’s attributes don’t meet the requirements of the background you rolled, roll again until you get one your character does meet.

Note that these requirements aren’t realistic. People from futuristic societies, for example, are unlikely to be any more intelligent than people from the Old West. These levels are set mainly so that all player-characters will be familiar with the technology of their background.

Result

Attribute requirements

Background

11-21

Intelligence must be at least 13

Citizen of the repeating city of Atlantis

22-32

Intelligence must be at least 4

Citizen of the repeating city of Black Creek, Wyoming

33-44

Charisma must be 14 or less

Robot

45-55

Strength must be higher than both Charisma and Intelligence

Neanderthal

56-66

Intelligence must be at least 13

From a technologically advanced society

[in the real game, each background will send you to its own paragraph.]

Citizen of Atlantis

You are bad at fighting and bargaining, since neither of these things happen in Atlantis. For the same reason, you find eating meat repellent. Unlike all other characters other than robots, you don’t lose Willpower in the stultifying city of Atlantis.

Your Tech Level is equal to your Intelligence. However, if your Intelligence is over 15, your Tech Level is only 15.

Your Magic Level is also equal to your Intelligence, and also has a maximum level of 15. This is a significant advantage: most characters have a Tech Level and Magic Level which add up to their Intelligence.

Citizen of Black Creek, Wyoming

Your are good at riding, and start with 6 bullets. In a world mostly made of metal, anyone could make a pistol. However gunpowder and cordite–and hence bullets–are rare. [Needs a disadvantage]

Your Tech Level is 6. Your Magic Level is your Intelligence minus 6.

Robot

You are immune to disease, less likely to have a soul, damaged by water and sandstorms, and don’t heal naturally but can get repaired. Unlike all other characters other than citizens of Atlantis, you don’t lose Willpower in the stultifying city of Atlantis.

Your Tech Level is your Intelligence minus 1. Your Magic Level is 1.

Neanderthal

You gain Willpower in wilderness, but lose it in all cities. You are bad at bargaining, but good at hunting and gathering.

2 thoughts on “Gigacrawler – character creation.”

Background requirements are a bit wonky: Int 3, Cha 15 means you don’t qualify for any backgrounds, and there are lots of score combos that force someone to keep rerolling until they settle on the one background that they do satisfy (like Int 14, Str Black Creek only).

Why not combine the score rolling and background rolling in some way? The “d66” chart doesn’t seem so elegant that you couldn’t instead figure out a way to combine it with the attribute die rolls. Like, “roll 3d6, add your Int and half your Cha, subtract your Str, the result determines your background on this chart” or whatever.